


Deal with the Devil

by MissAndry



Category: Gods Will Be Watching
Genre: Gen, Gore, Torture, Violence, torture fetishism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-11-08
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-24 14:31:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2584784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissAndry/pseuds/MissAndry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Shitty Rebel struggles with his own sense of morality, his goals, and the hot to trot tight pants torture twink that represents both everything he stands against and everything he wants to find the strength to be. Slightly pretentious diatribes on the ills of society yadda yadda included. Also, debunked Freudian psychology references. Probably also awkward domestic bits. It's terrible. Don't read it.</p>
<p>I have no idea if this is going full yaois or not, lets find out together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

Scraping his knees to make inches like he were a mule carrying a load comprised of guilt and responsibility, Liam had inserted himself in a cramped space between spaces to peruse a territory that very much did not welcome his stay. To be transparent, he was crawling through a ventilation shaft. It really wasn't his style; not hiding like a rat nor general subterfuge. But it was even less his style to leave two of his best to die. Or worse, give up all Xenolifer's secrets first. The secrets they knew that is. 

The blow to his dignity for scuffling through the ceiling was nothing however, compared to the idea of sleeping next to a pool of his own vomit. Indeed, Liam had lost his lunch earlier right there in the vent where he would least like to have done so. The why was something he wanted even less to think about but it was seared into his brain and echoed in his ears. 

He hadn't seen anything, mind. Only heard. Abraham and Jack, their screams so familiar but so different in weight from when he had heard them before. So sickening his stomach had decided to evacuate and try to escape on its own. He had been that disgusted just by the noise. It was galling, slightly embarrassing, and at the time completely paralyzing. 

Still, he stayed, and listened to it. All of it. He supposed it was only right to; if he couldn't stand witnessing the pain of his subordinates then what right would he have to ask them to endure it? Which he did ask of them not long after the torture had finally ceased. He asked for it like it was nothing even though he knew it wasn't. He knew he was asking them to face a ridiculous amount of agony. That's why it was important. That's why he stayed. And listened. To all of it. Steeled for twenty days of morbid endurance. 

That McAllister fellow was probably the worst part. Well, no, the flesh burning part was the worst. But to Liam's sense of humanity? That was heartbreaking. Such a disregard for life stirred his blood. Abraham and Jack didn't deserve to face someone with so little respect for them. They were soldiers who were supposed to clash with other people of pride and dignity, not belittled by a smarmy douche with a big stick. 

Liam had thought he had seen cruelty before. 

"He makes it look so easy," Liam sighed as he ran the flesh reparation spray over his charge's bodies, as per their request. 

"It's easy to exert power over the already powerless," Burden shrugged his bonds, unknowing of how much he would regret such careless waxing later when Liam would do precisely that. 

"No, I mean he seems to feel so at ease with the violence. I've never seen a person raise a gun with so little hesitation, even in self-defense, but he's effortlessly raised weapon after weapon with downright glee. There's no glory in all of this, he doesn't seem to have a drop of national pride, so I don't really..." he trailed off into a shrug and a shake of the head, words falling flaccid. 

Burden mulled it over. While Jack was completely disenfranchised with the conversation, Burden found it obnoxiously simple to separate himself from all the torture and think it through. "He's a monster but one thing he has going for him is inner peace. An ancient psychologist, not one anybody takes any more seriously than an alchemist mind you, but he said that true perversion was when you stop making the process about getting to the end goal and make the process itself the end goal. He was talking about fetishists but it seems to apply here. According to that guy, Irving's just a helpless pervert." 

"Oh please stop," Jack groaned, "Stop talking about him like he's sick or something, it ruins the narrative I'm trying to build myself so I don't feel at all bad about throttling him later." 

"He's a creep who's getting off on the thought of chopping your limbs off, Gods forbid he actually does, is that not demonizing enough?" 

"I'm shooting for full-on red pajamas and pitchfork." 

"Anyway," Burden smiled, though it was weak from his physical fatigue, "I don't know that he's sick. The planet we're on thinks differently from us and fosters the kind of attitude that allowed him to develop an interest in misery. He's part of a sick organism, but within that structure everything about him is acceptable and makes sense." 

"Gods," Liam breathed, once again truly struck as he was that day he walked Gactus VII's streets and witnessed the mindless and unquestioned integration of slavery. Realizing Irving was just one of those people, a single dot out of an uncountable number; realizing how truly corrupted all those humans were was revolting. "I don't think I can despise him enough for his complacency with the system." 

"Complacency?" Burden pondered, "You can't be complacent with the status quo if you're not dissentious in the first place. He maintains his world the way he thinks is best, makes the sacrifices he feels are necessary, although for selfish and indulgent reasons and with lives that don't belong to him. The only difference between him and you is that you weren't happy in the organism you were born into." 

"And I didn't brutalize you with a heated iron stick," Liam chided, galled at the comparison, "And my cause is less selfish and generally just better." 

"Well, yes, obviously I agree or I wouldn't be holding onto your secrets so desperately," Burden sorta kinda lied. He wasn't exactly dedicated to keeping Xenolifer's secrets but he wasn't in line to spill them either. If for loyalty or just for his own neck it was all the same. 

After their conversation Liam absconded into the vent like he did every night previously. But a few days passed. With all Burden said churning in his mind, for the first time he truly watched what his eyes had been unwilling to lay upon. He had gained the conviction to stare this devil in the face and confront it. If he didn't have the courage to face that cell, he would never manage to confront the whole organism. And so he watched, and absorbed. It was around the fifth day he watched Irving pulling Jack's teeth out one by one. By this time Liam had desensitized greatly but his unease remained strong. 

"Trying to get information out of you boys is like-" his sentence was punctuated with a great yank and blood vessels splitting like thin-stretched gum as the tooth found release from its throne, "-pulling teeth." He took a great drag from his cigarette. Liam felt like he was watching it all in slow motion, like he could feel the sinew ripping from Jack's mouth and the smoke dragging itself from Irving's sinuses. It was becoming oddly attractive and visceral to watch. The way Irving went about it was like a grand performance; in the way a ballet dancer would breathe in specific breaks, Irving's practice flowed: Question. Threat. Brutality. Over and over. Every break brung anticipation, established from the first moment of every brief respite and validated swiftly, all by rote. 

Liam grew numb for a while. He glazed over and the context of what he was looking at was lost to him as a sprout of admiration planted. However he steeled quickly, disgusted at himself, guilty for that moment. Because with that bit of admiration grew an equal amount of lust. What he wouldn't give to be just that inhuman enough to bring his own cause into fruition. Burden had not exactly said so but implied it; Irving was a more successful version of Liam. In his twisted way for his twisted reasons, but still... the completed version of their model. 

He grew weary at the intrusive thoughts. Did he despise Irving or idolize him? "Make up your mind," he groaned to himself. He refocused on watching his two brave compatriots' struggle, and as he did he watched Irving pass by his vent to get over to that disgusting workbench decorated with tools that in another place would be innocuous but here were morbid. 

Liam seized up in fright when he looked into the expressionless sunglasses and felt himself watched. It's not like he saw pupils pointed at him, but the slight way those blonde eyebrows moved up and his forehead creased, he recognized the shifted gaze. Brief but so very much there. Yet, they passed over him in search of something apparently more urgent. Liam's heart had gone from zero to seventy but now he was just slightly confused and doubting what he thought he saw. He didn't mention it that night when he sought to comfort his comrades once again. 

"I wonder what they actually do in their spare time," Jack pondered dazedly, suffering some head trauma and slightly out of it, "I know I wouldn't invite them to a party like ever... I don't want to imagine them actually having friends." 

"I can't imagine they leave you unguarded," Liam mused, "I've seen a couple of the other rooms. He wasn't lying about that hamster collection. Theres a kind of dirty living room also I believe, a lot of pizza boxes piled up in there." 

"Start doing espionage to keep our spirits up," Jack snarked, "Get a picture of Alexander's face. Or Irving before he puts his make-up on in the morning." 

Liam agreed that it would be significantly less dull around the place if he snooped more instead of bringing flesh reparation kits every day. So he made his word he would dig up dirt on the bara and the twink if for nothing else but to make the nights friendlier. That's how he ended up figuring out his incredibly stupid oversight. 

He had to be careful of course. It was a needlessly risky thing to do, rummage around in the Matching Pants Best Friends' stuff for funsies. Of course he was doing it to try and gather information for Jack and Abraham, a great cause to risk himself for. Well, that and personal curiosity. He'd found out about Alexander already from the nursery a floor up from the series of rooms that formed the cave of disturbing events; there was certainly a reason it was there besides for it's morgue cabinets. No, not about Big Alex the hybrid. He wanted to dig up a little about the twink with the shades. 

Shifting some pizza boxes to look at a stack of papers that for all he knew were secret Hollistic documents, the stack fell away and he found an even better prize. A tablet. Thinking it would be easily considered lost, he abducted it back to his hidey hole. 

It didn't disappoint. It was Irving's alright, the lock screen had a picture of him flipping the peace sign while hugging the shoulders of a corpse. Or, what he hoped to be a corpse, but the more he looked at it the more he doubted it to be dead. Luckily he was able to abscond from looking any more since the lock screen had no code at all. Which would have been easy to deal with anyway as Liam had broken into iPro's before but Irving had saved him some time by not implementing even the most basic of security measures. 

Inside he found first a page full of popular apps, a lot of games but notably none of them multiplayer or social network oriented. Jack would be pleased to know he was probably a social recluse. Next, a page of basic stuff-- photos, notes, music, video, et cetera. Glancing the thumbnails Liam could tell he wasn't prepared to really go through all of Irving's disturbing personal albums. His taste in music was decent however. 

Sweeping through the tablet's custom content was where he found a unique process that he couldn't have known what it did until he opened it. And boy was he surprised when he did. It opened to a grid of tiles filled with feeds. Skimming over them, he couldn't tell what they were from the small pictures, until he saw a familiar set of silhouettes. His gut slammed into his heart and he jammed his thumb onto the thumbnail to blow it up, realizing he was looking at his dear subordinate Jack, and the back of Abraham's head, with all their injuries as he saw them last. A live feed from the dungeon. 

Questions starting coming to him, and a sense of panic, but he wasn't even able to think them through before his train of thought was stunted by the tablet vibrating slightly in his folded lap. It blasted music and he dropped it, and he squirmed to mute it or turn it off but it was way too late. If the music hadn't resonated through the whole vent the thud of dropping it did. Desperate, he decided to haul ass. But hauling ass wasn't so feasible in a vent on your knees. 

In any case, all his options were more or less proven moot as the grate down the way was unjammed and a head popped through, a blonde mess of hair and some ridiculous shades adorning it. With it, a hand holding a gun waved at him, not threatening but letting him know it was there. 

"Hey, you found my iPro. I was worried I had left it on the tube again, the boss would have been so pissed." Irving beckoned with his loaded hand for Liam to come towards him and Liam wasn't in much of a position to refuse. Down a straight vent would have been an easy shot, the curve was too far away to even hope for it to and the distance it would take to flee the planet was worse. So, he ended up standing at gunpoint in Irving's living room. 

The big brute Alexander accosted Liam right out of the vent, stripped off his chest pouches and anything else he could find short of the tech planted directly into his temple and the clothes on his back. He left the room with all the belongings, presumably to lock them up or search through them. Either way he was left without being tied up or anything which was a little unnerving more than confidence-giving. 

"So. I think you already know I know you know but I'm Irving McAllister, that was my partner Alexander," he lit up a fresh smoke with the cig in his gun hand, grossly relaxed but still on the trigger. "I would ask for your name but I've been prodding at your friends for days and I still don't know theirs so I'm just going to assume you're at least half as tough." 

Liam hesitated to speak back but heck, he wasn't exactly tied down like Burden and Jack. That gave him a bit of confidence he could get away with maybe even snarking shades mcgee a little. Did Irving leave him that confidence on purpose though? Was he trying honey instead of the vinegar he had fed Abraham and Jack? Was he psyching himself out and making Irving's job super easy? He shook off the overthoughts. 

"You had to have seen me on those cameras," Liam stated. The question of why was implied. 

"Yep," Irving smiled, "You're welcome. For choosing not turning you in, that is. At least up until today; the favor ends here. No more freebies my friend." Liam tensed up but Irving waved his hand impatiently. "Calm down, I haven't made the phone call yet." 

"How do I know the bara isn't doing just that right now." 

"He doesn't like phones, prefers to see people's faces. Which is pretty rude to be honest since he never shows his own face back. Never talks back either but that's his charm." 

Liam interrupted the narrative, "Okay fine, not turning me in. Just explain your angle for letting me hang around all this time. The suspense is killing me." 

"Do you know what the most boring kind of torture subject is?" He stopped to present a cigarette to Liam who, in his slow confusion, took it and ended up dumbfoundedly letting Irving light it for him and then let it sit in his hand pointlessly, "It's a dead one. Next most boring is a broken one. Just like the most boring puzzle is a solved one. You feel me?" 

"Ah. You wanted me to help them." 

"Bingo!" Irving smiled warmly, "You made them hardier, cured their bodies and boosted their morale. And I got to push harder for longer. Thanks, sincerely." 

"That wouldn't happen to be enough to make you want to let me and them free would it." 

"Fuck no." 

Liam nodded in resignation. That would be too much to hope for. 

"But," he followed up, "I'm not tired of the arrangement. If you keep this between you and me, away from the ears of both my boss and my victims, I don't make the call. Heck, I'll even take responsibility for all the supplies you spirited away when I submit inventory." 

"That's... generous," Liam muttered. His first instinct was to refuse of course. Immediately try to disarm Irving and... then what? He and Burden and Jack hide in someone's attic until Xenolifer could extract them? The terrible truth was that staying in the position they were in was most convenient right now. 

"Oh yeah and," Irving interrupted Liam's inner dialog to sweeten the bargain, "Not only can you crash on my couch instead of in my wall, I wont interfere with your escape. 20 days is enough for me." 

Liam felt his lock turning open, relenting. If he could ensure Abraham and Jack's extraction that's what mattered, and having some degree of an ally on the inside would help. Ally probably wasn't the word but still. 

"...You absolutely can't kill them." 

"You're not in a position to make stipulations hombre. If they can survive, they can leave," he said and watched Liam's face turn into a grimace. "But obviously I won't actively try and kill them. Don't get your panties in a knot. We're both making this deal to see them survive longer, see?" He held out a hand, clean and nude and deceptively vulnerable looking without the old stained gloves Liam was used to seeing. They shook on it.


	2. Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Medical torture nonsense ahead. Not very specific or graphic.

"Going to maim your friends, you're limited to TWO beers while we're working," Irving instructed while he locked the door to the outside. Liam didn't intend to leave and he didn't need to keep him in, it was more a matter of keeping other people out. 

"Wait, can I watch the cameras?" Liam asked, met with a look that he couldn't discern the meaning of but was laden with the prompt to explain himself. "I've been with them this far." 

"Awh, solidarity with your friends. How noble." Irving jabbed his finger towards his tablet sitting oddly conveniently on the table. "Just watch with that. And don't puke again, the vent is one thing but the upholstery is another." 

Liam waved the comment and let Irving take off on his march to shake down Abraham and Jack with big Alexander right behind him. He took the chance while he wasn't being watched to groan and rub his eyes. It had proved impossible to sleep after being caught and he felt weary and dizzy. Still, he had his resolution to share these days with his comrades until they were safe and taking a nap during their torment wasn't an option. 

He settled into Irving's ragged couch, curled his toes up inside his socks like he was going to watch a romcom. He wasn't. He switched into the camera feeds and after a while the dynamic duo waltzed in and woke up their prey from the only slice of peace they were allowed in a day. Irving went through his usual routine, washing his hands and putting on a pair of gloves that strangely weren't the usual pair, but a pair of rubber ones from a box. And he talked a lot. Liam fiddled around with the interface, figuring out that he could pull some low quality audio out of it. Not necessarily an improvement. 

"I hooked up with this cute blonde last night," Irving caught Liam's attention as the volume came up. Liam knew that wasn't true, he had been there. Confirmation Irving's stories were fabrications perhaps. "A fan, I think. Has been watching me a while. On my couch upstairs right now, exhausted. I'll probably have Alexander make us brunch after this, so we're on a tight schedule. I'm going to up the ante." 

Irving threw open the cabinet under the sink and pulled out a tray that unfolded wheels under itself. The tray was an old hospital dolly, equipped with old medical tools. Archaic but functional in an emergency. Except Liam had the feeling these hadn't seen many emergencies. 

"I'm not a doctor, but I watched an instructional video on how to castrate someone in high school biology so I have a general idea of what I'm doing here." He pulled a wheelie chair up to Burden and sidled up to him, legs spread and dolly pulled up next to him. It didn't take much imagination to figure out what his modus operandi was today. Alexander picked up Jack's chair with Jack in it and swung him around to a good vantage point to watch. Then he took Burden's chair instead and held it at a tilt, a makeshift surgery bed. The shittiest bed. 

Irving took up a scalpel and started cutting into burden's stomach. Burden turned pale but didn't look and didn't react violently. It was probably the right thing to do, not mess with Irving's aim. When he started pulling flaps of skin aside Jack began to balk a little, even though Burden had simmered into closing his eyes and groaning. It couldn't have felt good but Abraham wasn't scared of pain as much as having his guts spill out. 

"Now, I'm gonna ask you one question. And you're gonna answer it. If that's not how this goes down, I turn your innards into my personal play-set. But hey, as I said: one question. You don't gotta spill all the beans today. Just tell me one lil thing. You got that? Tell me you got it cause it's not gonna be easy to speak in a moment." 

Burden replied in an even tone but his sweat told a different story about his state. "How am I going to answer your question then?" 

"Your butt buddy will do the talking for you." 

Burden looked at Jack. Liam knew what that look meant, it meant "don't spill the beans no matter what". Of course Jack agreed. Irving tsked and crept his fingers in Burden's open cavity. Burden looked uncomfortable but not in any extra pain. 

"Alright, tell me the name of your head honcho." Irving waited. He looked at Burden, and at Jack, registered their stone faces and pouted. "Nobody in the class knows? I'll just have to call on someone if nobody volunteers." Liam couldn't see what he did to Burden's internal bits, but he didn't much need to to know why Burden started gasping and groaning. Jack was recoiling from the sight. 

"It's a healthy baby, congratulations," Irving chided and pulled his hand out of Burden to hold the chair, making a gesture for Alexander to let him have it and go get something. "What's a good name for a shit rebel? Do you know any good names for this baby?" Alexander grunted, pointing at the cork-board of instruments. "Drill, Alex babe, the drill." 

Alexander plugged in the electric drill and threaded it over to Irving, who pulled the trigger in a couple short bursts to verify it was running. "Choose a name for this rebel baby or I'm taking your rib," Irving stipulated bluntly. Jack looked uneasy and gave Burden a look and shook his head just slightly. 

"Jack, it's fine-" Burden tried to scold him into silence but Irving pushed on something (lungs?) and he gagged silent, making small gurgling squeaks hardly even picked up by the microphones but terrifying nonetheless. 

"You're killing him," Jack pressed with a dire strain on his voice. Burden and Jack had pled insincerely with Irving before and this was not one of the insincere pleas. 

"Yeah? Well if I do it's on him and you for not telling me one," he held Burden down with a hand on his chest to prevent him spasming, "little," he whirred up the drill and hovered it over Burden's chest threateningly, "name." 

"STOP," Jack screamed, "Liam, his name is Liam Ferohn-Gau okay? Shit." 

"Hmm! Liam Ferohn-Gau. I'll need you to spell that one for me. So your leader is Liam... interesting... though there are still things that bug me..." 

"You said one question," Jack growled. 

"So I did! Brunch! I almost forgot since I was having so much fun." Closing the skin flaps, he punched a couple staples in them and he kicked Burden's chair back onto all-fours. "Alexander, patch this thing up before you come out. I have a brunch date." Liam ended up looking directly into those soulless glasses as Irving stared right into the camera on his way out, throwing bloody rubber gloves on the metal slats. Liam sat catatonic, staring at the screen, a ton of thoughts stuck in his head. Most of all, he was angry. When Irving walked into the room he thought he was close to crying with how much he resented the man. 

"Liam... I seem to recall them calling you that during your rendezvous," Irving said, ignoring Liam's distress, "Don't tell me I'm in the presence of such a prestigious figure?" He was clearly insincere about being humbled. Irving plodded around the couch to take a gander at the feed Liam was still fixed on. "Did you enjoy the show? I thought the angle might be bad. Not on his guts, on the back of my head. If you look too dead-on it gets a bit... well, don't look at it dead-on." 

Liam heard Irving fine but didn't reply. He was still shaking. Because he had a singular thought that, while egotistical, felt more real as Irving spoke to him. 

"A show? A show of what?" 

"A show to show you that I can end all of this whenever I want. I made an agreement with you but I want you to know I'm in power," He placed his hands on Liam's shoulders and rubbed them like he was going to get the knots out that way. "I could have broken these toys on a whim, I just didn't because I didn't want to. I need you to know that to make this relationship work." 

Liam nodded. He wasn't as conceited as he had hoped. Envy overcame him. Irving had dominated Abraham, dominated Jack, and now he had dominated Liam too. All in an hour. He was reminded of his fantasy of being that person, that improved model of their kind. And he groaned. He was reminded of Shaman's plan. The whole reason they had come to this Gods forsaken place. The Medusea virus. Liam kept saying it was only a threat, a token to hold over the Federation. But wouldn't it be so easy to just release it Somewhere? Like walking mindlessly over a cliff, just shut down his judgment and go. Create something great out of something terrible. Make sacrifices of the unwilling. 

"Are you gonna tell 'em about our arrangement when you get out?" Irving inquired, no reverence given to Liam's silence. Let them know you were plumping their feathers for me? Fearless leader turkey-basting the crew?" 

Liam continued his silence and Irving grew disinterested. He let go of Liam's shoulders and went off, supposedly to make brunch. Liam ended up eating with him in silence while he watched TV, which was a surreal amount of humanness to be exposed to from Irving. He understood why Jack wanted to think of him as a pitchfork wielding devil. By dawn Irving offered Liam his belongings back so he could go comfort his friends. 

He had to go in through he wall of course, which was a bit embarrassing. And he had to act like he hadn't already directly seen the big wound on Abraham's torso. They didn't have any reason to suspect him of anything, it wasn't as if he had taken a bath or they were going to notice couch fibers on him. 

"Hey," Jack greeted quietly, clearly not in a good state of mind but pushing his best face on, "Get any gruesome details on the wonder twins?" 

"Irving's taste in music is pretty okay," Liam replied, but the exchange was a bit empty. They were clearly both more worried about Burden than about the mundane details of Irving and Alexander's lives. Liam went to Burden and examined the careless, clumsy stitches. 

"Hey, Jack?" Liam called out, "Don't worry about it. When you make that face I feel like I'm guilting you by being here." 

"You heard me 'fess, then. Sorry man," Jack muttered. Although what Liam registered was guilt was less that and more awkwardness at having to face Liam after betraying him. He wasn't guilty since he wasn't loyal in the first place but it as a wee bit weird to have to apologize anyway. 

"Liam," Burden muttered, weak and pathetic sounding, "You as well. Don't make that face like you've done something wrong." 

Liam laughed. Insincerely on the outside and bitterly on the inside, he laughed. He wasn't sure what he was doing right or wrong at this point. Making deals with the devil for what he thought were good reasons. 

"Hey, Abraham," Liam started hesitantly, a little weary about pushing him for guidance while he was clearly under more duress, "Sacrifices for the greater good, even if they're not mine to make..." 

Burden watched him falter and shook his head. "You can't make anything happen by wagering one life. Don't worry about us, Liam. We'll do what it takes to survive." 

Liam nodded, knowing Burden thought he was guilting about forcing them to keep Xenolifer's secrets and unwilling to push out what he was really pondering. He would tell them about the virus plan for sure if they made it out of this, he decided, and get Burden's thoughts then. Until then he would just deal with this growing attraction to monstrosity alone. And badly.


End file.
